GF’s expertise in RF/mmWave, testing, and packaging helps clients bring their products to market faster and more cost-effectively

by Gary Dagastine

The world was never the same after the brilliant physicist Heinrich Hertz proved the existence of radio waves in 1888. His discoveries led to new communications technologies that revolutionized how people lived and worked, and spawned many new industries.

Now, more than 130 years later, radio waves are once again revolutionizing the world, as new RF/millimeter-wave (mmWave)-based technologies drive growing interest and investments in 5G, mobile, and wireless infrastructure applications.

Semiconductors are at the heart of this latest revolution in communications, and GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF) is playing a key role as the world’s leading foundry for RF/mmWave solutions. But in addition to a portfolio of differentiated and proven RF platforms for wafer fabrication, GF also offers clients unparalleled expertise in an array of post-fab turnkey services – along every step of the way, from finished wafer to tape-and-reel.

Post-Fab Functions are Critical to Success

Post-fab assembly, test, and advanced packaging functions are critical to the successful production of RF/mmWave integrated circuits (ICs) because the physics at these frequencies is complex, which makes it extremely difficult to accurately characterize and test these devices. These post-fab functions play a key role in keeping costs low while simultaneously delivering the high production volumes, high quality, and high reliability needed to meet growing market demands.

GF offers post-fab turnkey services to clients of all sizes who may have very different business models. The two extremes are startups focused primarily on product design and have very little capability in resourcing post-fab functions, and larger companies who also are focused on design but may not have the expertise or capability in complex post-fab activities for RF/mmWave. Clients of both types, and those in between, often engage GF to manage these post-fab activities for them.

GF’s services are based on extensive in-house RF expertise and include proprietary RF/mmWave testing technology, flexible engagement models to fit a client’s particular needs, and expert supply chain management based on decades of experience with RF technologies gained as part of the IBM Microelectronics acquisition in 2015.

In particular, GF’s in-house RF/mmWave test capability, called tester-on-board (ToB), represents a new testing paradigm for mmWave ICs. Traditional high-volume manufacturing test equipment is unable to cost-effectively perform the required testing of mmWave ICs in production environments – including, for example, measuring linearity and output power, verifying phase shifter performance, and validating noise figures. GF has invested millions of dollars developing its ToB solution, a modular plug-and-play system based on technology developed at IBM that reduces the cost of testing by 3-5 times versus rack-and-stack systems.

A Unified Approach

The increased complexity that comes with 5G mmWave applications calls for a unified design/production approach, taking into account front- and back-end considerations holistically in order to get the desired performance and reliability from a mmWave IC.

Packaging is a critical component in determining the performance of mmWave devices, said Peter Rabbeni, GF’s vice president of Mobile and Wireless Infrastructure. If packaging is regarded just as a back-end function, he said, clients may get bogged down in post-fab complexities, which could require additional time and, in turn, potentially result in missing a window of opportunity in the market.

“It’s not sufficient to simply test product performance at the wafer level at these frequencies. The specifications must be met in actual over-the-air operation through finished, packaged products,” he said. GF’s expertise with RF technologies and the company’s unique in-house RF testing capabilities are powerful tools that help clients meet this requirement. Rabbeni gave as an example a typical challenge faced by 5G base station designers: how to optimally design the power amplifier (PA) in a base station to balance reliability and achievable output power so that a handset can pick up its transmitted signal.

“Signal strength is key, of course, but there are modulation peaks and valleys that make it hard to know exactly how hard to drive the PA,” Rabbeni said. “Drive the PA too hard and you not only compromise signal quality but also PA lifetime. Drive the PA too weak and you leave efficiency on the table. There’s a ‘sweet spot’ that balances optimum power and reliability for optimum coverage. This also helps optimize the number of base stations needed to get the required coverage,” and ultimately minimizes operator capital expenditures and operating expenses, he said.

“The key to determining this sweet spot quickly and cost-effectively is having the ability to accurately simulate the performance of the PA and to characterize its reliability under any set of modulation conditions,” Rabbeni said. “GF’s process design kits incorporate our extensive RF intellectual property for device reliability and performance modeling and enable clients to perform these simulations quickly and easily.”

In addition, GF’s post-fab turnkey services enable clients to tap into the expertise of in-house experts to develop the best possible solutions. Jeff Pauza, RF turnkey business line manager for GF’s Mobile and Wireless Infrastructure unit, explained: “Let’s say a client’s design has the solder ball placements located on the bottom of the die, which is common. This could result in an unreliable or even unsafe product, depending on thermal and other effects that may relate to a specific application. Maybe the client isn’t aware of this, or simply hasn’t taken it into consideration in laying out the I/O.

“From our extensive experience with RF designs, we know what types of layouts are required to mitigate such effects, and our technical experts are available to clients to advise them and get their product to market faster,” Pauza said. “When clients realize that we, their foundry, are actually also expert in the testing and packaging of RF devices, and that they don’t have to go out and find someone else to do this for them, or set up separate relationships with OSATs [outsourced semiconductor assembly and test providers] and manage the complexities of global supply chains themselves, they see the advantages.”

Looking Ahead

Beyond 5G, GF’s post-fab turnkey services are likely to become even more important in the years to come. Guido Uberreiter, GF’s vice president of Tapeout, Mask and Postfab Operations, sees a future where RF/mmWave capabilities increasingly are added to state-of-the-art logic chips for AI, cloud computing, automotive, and other applications.

“As you look to the future you see an increasing number of applications that have to do with AI and cloud computing. This next wave of clients – many of which will be small and mid-sized companies – will want to combine RF with logic for such things as automotive radar, and they will need to find a solution to build RF SoCs (system-on-chip) in a way that is both the most cost-effective and very fast,” he said.

“They don’t want to have to send chips around the world many times, and this plays exactly to our strengths. In Dresden, for example, we have a center of excellence for bump-and-test, until now essentially dedicated to logic chips, given our 20-year history of producing advanced logic ICs in Dresden for clients. Today, we take the output from GF Fab 1 in Dresden, and Fab 8 in Malta, then bump, test, and send the tested wafers to clients. We will evolve these services to include the specialized RF expertise, and deliver them in an exceptional way for the 40-80 GHz range,” he said

GF’s post-fab turnkey services are also attractive to clients, Uberreiter said, because many customers require a secure supply chain. “Testing involves working with a lot of IP, and many customers ask us to do it because they know us and trust us. That is one of the reasons why we have become the largest test facility in Europe.”

Overall, post-fab turnkey services are another way in which GF differentiates itself and its technology as the world’s leading specialty foundry.

“Not only do we offer differentiated technology solutions for our clients, we offer differentiated services that provide a quick, high-quality, and cost-effective path to production and – ultimately – help them get to market faster,” Uberreiter said.

For companies around the world, the idea of “business as usual” has been thrown into upheaval. The global COVID-19 crisis is impacting industry, government, communities, and daily life in unprecedented ways.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES is managing through the crisis with an unwavering focus on two guiding principles: the safety and well-being of our worldwide team, their families and communities; and delivering on our commitments to our clients. With these priorities in mind, the company has taken extraordinary steps to safeguard both its workforce and its manufacturing operations.

As the world’s leading specialty foundry, GF has a unique role in the global supply chain. Its semiconductor technology is vital to a range of industries, including health care, communications, infrastructure, and security. Because of this vital role, GF has been designated an “essential manufacturer” by the states of New York and Vermont, as well as by the federal governments of the United States and Singapore.

To meet this charge of continuing production amidst a global pandemic, GF has adapted to the situation by dynamically adjusting its protocols, health and safety measures, and business processes to protect its team while maintaining manufacturing excellence.

Protecting Employees

GF has a comprehensive series of measures in place to care for its employees. Around the globe, GF has initiated a work-from-home policy for all non-fab and non-operational employees, which includes colleagues across a wide spectrum of functions, from human resources and finance to legal and procurement. Even many engineers are able to monitor production tools and perform analytics remotely.

To protect employees whose work is directly related to production, and who continue to work “on-site” at the fabs, GF has implemented stringent site controls. These include strict screening of any visitors entering a GF facility, as well as daily temperature screenings of all employees. As of April 6, all employees working on site are required to wear face masks in a continued effort to limit the spread of the virus.

Inside the fabs, GF has enacted mandatory social distancing. Among these measures are capping the number of attendees at in-person meetings, reducing the seating capacity in cafeterias, mapping out 2-meter intervals on the floor in certain areas, and alternating gowning rooms used by employees entering Fab cleanrooms.

In a recent interview with IEEE Spectrum, Ron Sampson, GF senior vice president and general manager of U.S. fab operations, said another change has been moving meetings of the operational staff, whenever possible, to the fab’s cleanroom, which are among the cleanest places on Earth from a contamination perspective. From the interview:

Once employees are suited up and in the clean room, they’re taking advantage of it. “It’s one of the cleanest places on earth,” says Sampson. “We’ve moved all of our operations meetings onto the factory floor itself,” instead of having physically separated team members in a conference room.

Between the shift structure at its fabs, and the company’s work-from-home policy, GF has significantly reduced the number of employees who are on site at any given time. Social distancing and other policies are helping to ensure these employees are as safe as possible.

For all employees, GF has introduced new and enhanced benefits to help team members remain healthy, care for family members, and face other challenges arising from the pandemic. These include emergency paid leave for employees who are unable to work on-site or remotely, and quarantine paid leave for employees who are directed to quarantine by their physician or health authority.

Additionally, to recognize employees who continue to work on-site in fabs, GF announced an appreciation award. At the end of May, this award will be paid to employees – excluding members of the senior leadership team – whose work cannot be done remotely, and who have worked their assigned on-site schedules.

Protecting Communities

GF understands the pandemic is impacting the daily lives of its employees beyond the workplace. It is also impacting their families, friends, and communities.

“Now more than ever, it is important that we pull together as a community — not just a GF community, but a global one. And the global community is in need,” Mike Cadigan, GF senior vice president of client design enablement, recently stated. Cadigan is the executive co-sponsor of GF’s GlobalGives community impact program.

Recognizing this need, GF has committed to donating more than $1 million USD to support local communities. Half of this funding will go toward supporting regional nonprofits in the areas where GF fabs and offices are located. This effort builds upon GF’s earlier COVID-related donations of $10,000 to food banks near GF sites, including the Central Texas Food Bank, Vermont Foodbank, Hudson Valley Food Bank, Saratoga County Economic Opportunity Council, Second Harvest Silicon Valley, and Singapore’s The Courage Fund.

The other half will be used to expand GF’s GlobalGives matching program. For the remainder of 2020, GF will offer 2:1 matching on all qualifying employee donations, up to $2,500 USD. This builds upon GF’s earlier donation of $25,000 USD across the UN Foundation, which is funding the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 response efforts, and the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, to provide supplies and relief to frontline health care workers in the hardest hit regions of the world.

Additionally, members of the GF senior leadership team are making personal contributions totaling more than $100,000 USD to nonprofit organizations around the globe to help those impacted by the global pandemic.

GF is also identifying opportunities to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) to those at greatest risk to COVID-19. The company has made significant equipment donations – including medical-grade masks, gloves, and gowns – to local hospitals and first responder organizations in each of our regions, and is seeking additional PPE materials to help those in need.

Protecting and Connecting the World

Semiconductors are integral to the technology relied upon by families, individuals, communities, governments, and businesses around the world, in every nation. Semiconductors are also a critical enabling technology of electronic components used in many medical devices – including those that are essential to combating the global pandemic crisis.

One example is GF technology powering leading-edge mobile diagnostic devices, which are being used by health care professionals to monitor patients for pneumonia and lung-related symptoms associated with COVID-19. These devices are being used by doctors and nurses on the front line of the crisis to more effectively treat patients afflicted by the virus.

Additionally, GF semiconductor technology helps to power the IBM supercomputers that are at the heart of the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium. The partnership brings together government, industry, and academia to provide access to the world’s most powerful high-performance computing resources, in support of fighting the contagion.

Away from the front lines, daily life has been upended for millions of individuals and families who now find themselves working from home and engaged in online learning. More than ever before, wireless devices are playing a central role in people’s lives, and GF technology is helping to make telework and remote learning possible. More than 85 percent of today’s smartphones feature GF RF technology, which also powers other wireless devices such as laptop computers and smart speakers, as well as wi-fi routers, cell towers, and countless other applications.

Protecting Clients

In a March 23 letter to clients and partners, GLOBALFOUNDRIES CEO Tom Caulfield reported GF fabs were operating at 90 percent to 100 percent of production targets.

Part of this ongoing success is due to GF’s crisis management teams, structured at the corporate level and at each site, who continue to provide real-time guidance for employees and are constantly updating policies in accordance with public health guidance. Teams meet daily, and any emerging issues at a site or within a region can be quickly identified, escalated, and addressed.

The primary reason for this successful business continuity, however, is GF employees and their dedication to the company and its clients.

One standout example Caulfield highlighted are the 450 Malaysian team members who have temporarily relocated to Singapore in response to the Malaysian-Singapore border closing, in order to keep GF operations in Singapore on track. Many of the Malaysian employees who were unable to make the temporary move received new equipment, procured and set up with GF security and remote access within hours by the IT team, to allow them to work from home.

GF manufacturing continuity is also fortified by its strategic sourcing program. Even under normal operating conditions, the company maintains a certain level of “days of supply” of critical inputs, to mitigate against potential or unforeseen supply disruptions. As the COVID-19 crisis continued to worsen, these efforts were amplified and the GF procurement team has doubled down its efforts to secure and reroute source materials to GF fabs.

One of GF’s key strengths is its close collaboration and partnership with its clients. These relationships rely on frequent face-to-face interactions. Like most companies, GF has shifted most of these interactions to virtual encounters. This has involved some adjustments to GF’s IT infrastructure, but the new reality of remote collaboration is progressing well with no disruptions to current projects and no detriment to new projects just getting started.

Looking Ahead

How long does GF expect this global crisis to last? Sampson, the GF senior vice president and general manager of U.S. fab operations, said no one can be sure.

“This is a situation that is not going to return to normal overnight,” he said. “By its very nature, it’s going to be extended. We recognize that and we’re planning accordingly for that.”

As a manufacturer of some of the most vital technology in the world, GF and its employees are in the problem solving business, Sampson said. No one knows what the “new normal” will be after the world emerges from the pandemic crisis, but GF and its workforce of problem solvers are well-positioned to face and overcome any obstacles that present themselves, he said.

Regardless of how the crisis evolves, GF CEO Caulfield said, the company’s primary concerns will continue to be the health and safety of employees, and delivering on commitments to clients.

“The semiconductor industry is the fuel that drives the worldwide economy, and GF is vital to this industry,” Caulfield told employees. “We will get through this crisis together, and emerge a better company, better team, and even more vital to the world.”